The preferred embodiment concerns a method and an arrangement or system to transfer data between at least two processing units of a printing or copying system in which data with at least processing information are transferred between the processing units. The preferred embodiment also concerns a printing or copying system to process web-shaped substrate material with the aid of at least two proximity units of the printing or copying system and the use of a network connection to provide a data transfer connection between the control stations of at least two processing units of a printing or copying system.
Known high-capacity printing or high-capacity copying systems with print capacities of greater than 100 sheets DIN A4 per minute and printing speeds of up to more than 2 m per second typically comprise pre- and/or post-processing units that are often executed as separate structural units and are coupled with at least one image generation unit. The at least one image generation unit and the pre- and/or post-processing units are arranged in series in a paper travel direction indicating the production direction in order to serially process the substrate material. The paper travel direction is generally the transport direction of the substrate material through the respective high-capacity printing or high-capacity copying system. A high-capacity printer or high-capacity copier is advantageously used as an image generation unit of the high-capacity printing or high-capacity copying system.
The control and coordinate of the processing steps of the individual processing units requires an exchange of data with processing information between the processing units of the printing or copying system. In particular in the processing of web-shaped substrate material, a real-time processing of the processing information pertaining to the paper travel is necessary in order to control the processing steps of the individual processing units and conform them to one another. The desire and the requirement thereby exists to be able to combine apparatuses of different manufacturers into a printing or copying system in that the individual apparatuses are arranged in series so that they advantageously form a complete print path. Depending on the type of and the requirements for the production of a print product to be produced, the print path can also comprise multiple printing units as well as auxiliary apparatuses, for example stackers, cooling tracks, re-moisteners, cutting, folding, binding, stitching, enveloping, franking and/or packaging units.
In order to be able to meet continuously increasing requirements for the processing workflow in the production of print products, in the prior art job ticket chaperone data are known, in particular what are known as job ticket data that are exchanged between multiple software and/or hardware systems in addition to a print data stream or a document data stream. Applications are also known in which job ticket data are inserted into the print data stream. The job ticket data are advantageously stored in a separate file and advantageously correspond to a job definition format known as JDF. In addition to the job definition format, it is also known to provide a job messaging format that is designated as JMF (Job Messaging Format). An industry consortium has agreed upon the JDF specification for the exchange of data formats in the printing process that, at the point in time of the present patent application, exists in version 1.3 from 30 Sep. 2005 and can be downloaded from the Internet page http://www.cip4.org. An overview of this standard is indicated on Pages 15 through 34.
It is also known to provide a specialized, standardized data interface for data exchange between the processing units of high-capacity printing systems and/or high-capacity copying systems. Such a data interface, known as UP3I (Universal Printer-, Pre- and Post-Processing Interface), has been standardized by an industry consortium. An exchange of data with processing information (in particular of control information) between printing apparatuses and with pre- and post-processing units that can be combined with these printing apparatuses, as well as with a control unit integrated into a processing unit and/or with a separately arranged operating unit, is possible in a simple manner with the aid of the UP3I data interface. For the UP3I data interface, typical processing information for the processing units and the processing workflow of a printing path are standardized, in particular as control commands and event messages in the interface commands of the UP3I data interface. Details regarding this UP3I data interface as well as the standard of the UP3I data interface existing in the current version 1.20 as of 2 Nov. 2004 are published on the Internet page http://www.UP3I.org at the point in time of this application. An overview of this standard is indicated on Pages 12 through 18.
It is desirable that a complete page tracking in the processing of individual sheets as well as a complete form tracking in the processing of web-shaped substrate material is ensured with the aid of the data exchange between the individual processing units of a printing system, and that the required error correction measures are determined and executed given an occurred error. These error corrections methods in particular exist to determine whether the printing and the processing of individual pages or forms must be repeated, and if yes, the pages or forms that must be regenerated are to be determined automatically. This is in particular desirable given the projection of comparably complex and large print jobs, for instance in the production of books, so that the entire partially-produced print job is not classified as flawed and the print pages that have already been generated do not have to be separated out as spoilage.
In the prior art there is also known automatic feedback to a data preparation system for the preparation and coordination of print jobs, i.e. in particular to a print server. However, a repeated printing and a repeated processing of the defective pages could be specifically initiated via this feedback.
The printing unit or the printing units generally form the boundary between the pre-processing units and the post-processing units. Depending on the type and design of the printing unit and the processing requirements specified by the print job, arrangements are also selected in which multiple printing apparatuses are arranged in series. Depending on the type and design of the printing apparatus that forms the image generation unit, this is in the position to print print images with one or more colors on the front side and/or back side of the substrate material to be printed. What are known as twin or triple configurations of multiple printing apparatuses can thereby also be provided that consist of two or three printing apparatuses between which intermediate processing units can also be provided, in particular turning units, buffer units (paper buffers), cooling and/or moistening units. Pre-processing units are, for example, unrolling units, single sheet feed units (what are known as feeders), mark printing devices to generate printer's imprints etc. Post-processing units are, for example, stitching machines, cutting machines, folding machines, binding machines, devices to inject additional pages etc.
In addition to the UP3I data interface for the data exchange between the individual processing units of a printing system, proprietary solution approaches to the exchange of control information are known. However, a plurality of these interfaces are not standardized, whereby the exchange of processing information (in particular of control signals) must be adapted for processing units to be combined with one another. For example, at the beginning of the '90s what is known as a Typ1 interface was defined by Siemens AG that has been used in a plurality of high-capacity printers as an interface for the coupling of these printers with pre- and/or post-processing units. For example, the Typ1 interface has eleven usable signals that are unidirectional and that connect multiple processing units with the printing system in a potential-separated manner via optocouplers. A similar interface has been defined by the Xerox Corporation as DFA Level 1.
Starting from such proprietary solutions, the aforementioned standard for UP3I has been developed in order to enable a continuous communication within a digital printing path with apparatuses (i.e. processing units) of different manufacturers. A high degree of automation of the printing path can be achieved via the use of apparatuses with respective UP3I interfaces and via a corresponding data exchange of data with processing information. In particular, UP3I enables automated job changes as well as a central control and a central monitoring of all apparatuses of the printing path, whereby what is known as a single point of operation is possible.
In principle, it is provided to use UP3I both in single sheet printing systems and in printing systems for the printing of web-shaped substrate material. However, the UP3I interface is presently used only for single sheet printing systems since—in spite of the desired for a real-time capability of the UP3I data interface that was formulated in the UP3I standard—a real-time-capable processing of data with processing information is not possible with the aid of the UP3I interface. In single sheet printing systems, a time-critical paper travel control is presently avoided in that the processing information have already been transferred to the respective processing unit before the arrival of a single sheet, whereby the processing information associated with this single sheet are used for its processing when this processing unit detects the arrival of the respective single sheet with the aid of a sheet edge sensor.
At present, a print path for continuous printing (i.e. for the processing of web-shaped substrate material) in which UP3I is used for paper travel control at printing speeds of 1 m per second and faster that functions in practice for high-capacity printer systems is still not actually known since the processing of the web-shaped substrate material with the aid of different processing units requires a real-time processing of at least a portion of the paper travel information that UP3I presently does not provide with the certainty that is required for use in practice.
In known high-capacity printing or high-capacity copying systems, barcodes are printed on the web-shaped substrate material (advantageously on every form to be processed) for form tracking and for paper travel control, which barcodes are then read by barcode readers of the individual processing units in order to verify the position of the substrate material and identify individual print form regions. Corresponding processing information can thereby be applied to the correct region of the web-shaped substrate material.
The data transfer of the UP3I data interface defined in the standard is also physically based on a Firewire data connection between the individual data processing units according to the IEEE 1394 standard. The physical transfer layer, the connection layer for the conversion of transaction queries into packets and to secure transactions given transmission errors, and the transaction layer for an asynchronously secured transfer of data between the processing units, as well as a bus management layer for bus configuration and management activities according to the IEEE 1394 standard are thereby used. Building on this data transmission, a transport layer and at least one application layer are defined by the UP3I interface.
However, in practice problems occur given data connections according to the IEEE 1394 standard in field of industrial printing engineering. In particular, the data transfer according to the IEEE 1394 standard with commercially available components is prone to interference from electromagnetic influences, whereby in practice problems have repeatedly occurred in the transmission of data with processing information in printing systems. Furthermore, the present hardware to provide data transfer connections according to the IEEE 1394 standard and to provide the IEEE 1394 layers required for the UP3I interface only a relatively small selection of software and hardware exists, wherein the prevalence of data interfaces according to the IEEE 1394 standard in new apparatuses continuously decreases, and the selection of interface modules for data interfaces according to the IEEE 1394 standard has also continuously decreased, and many well known manufacturers no longer continue to support this standard. Add to this that there is only one module (known as a link layer module) that can be connected with a microcontroller and that provides a data interface according to the IEEE 1394 standard, wherein it is not foreseeable for what period of time this link layer module will still be available. Additional available IEEE 1394 interface modules have a PCI or PCIe interface and are thus useable only with data processing units that possess a PCI bus. It is thus to be expected that IEEE 1394 data interfaces will in the future be supported only by larger data processing systems such as personal computers and blade servers, whereby the integration into simple pre- and post-processing apparatuses is not reasonable for economic reasons, and a UP3I data interface can thereby no longer be provided for a plurality of processing units.
Additional printing systems with multiple coupled processing units are also known from the documents U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,040,820 B2 and 6,786,149 B1.